Using SPA gauge sensors

Rubber Chicken
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Dec 20, 2005 6:47 pm

Using SPA gauge sensors

Postby Rubber Chicken » Sat Mar 11, 2006 4:06 am

I have three SPA gauges (water temp/gbox temp, oil temp/ oilpressure & volts/ fuel pressure) and have successfully wired the sensors to the DL1.

On the SPA each sensor has a three wire connector with a red, green and black wire. The red is +12V, the green is GND and the black is the sensor output. Wire the green to the DL1 analog ground (see note below) and the black to the DL1 analog input (5V or 12V works; 5V has better resolution).

The part you need to be careful about is creating a ground loop between the two analog grounds (SPA and DL1). In theory what I did was not recommended but in practice you can get away with in as long as your grounds are 100% good. Test the voltage difference between the SPA ground and the DL1 analog ground, and then also test the current flow. Anything below a few millivolts and milliamps should be OK.

The analysis setting for the temperature sensors is (volts - 1.0) * 58.0 [degs F]and for the pressure sensors is (volts - 1.0) * 80.0 [psi]. I'm too lazy to work out the conversion in the correct units (bar and celcius), but the datapoints I plotted looked like the voltage/pressure and voltage/temp equations were 'nice' round numbers.

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